Author: dannyhong

Ironically, I asked for this

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the big selling points I used on my dad when I was arduously trying to talk him to move down to Georgia, other than the fact that everything made sense, was that with him being somewhat in the Metro Atlanta area, not only could I see him with tremendously more regularly than any member of his family had been able to see him over the last 10+ years, he could now participate in things like holidays, events and milestone occasions, like the Pre-K graduation of his granddaughter.

Yes, I know that in the grand spectrum of things, Pre-K graduations are pretty much important only to the parents of the children ‘graduating’ from preschool, but it’s one of those things where I’ve been to enough children’s things over the last six years to understand and have witnessed all sorts of healthy family dynamics where grandparents often show up to events as such, because it’s what family does – show up.

Because graduation day was kind of hectic on account of an altered schedule and in-laws visiting, I didn’t want to have to wake up at like 5 AM to drive the 40 miles to my dad’s facility to pick him up, and then weather the teeth of Atlanta morning traffic to get back 40 miles, I opted to just hail an Uber for my dad, and bring him to my side of town, and then we could go to graduation, and either I drive him back, or I send him home in another Uber. 

We’re adults, and we throw money at obstacles.

I call him at 7 AM, to find out if he’s ready to go, and naturally he doesn’t pick up his phone because communication with my dad is basically a one-way street where he will blow up my phone whenever he wants to ask me a question that I’ve already answered for him at least 15 times previously, but when I need to get in touch with him, he never fucking picks up the phone, and I can usually expect to get a callback in a minute or two, like he’s a fucking ER doctor being paged.

Anyway, when he calls back, I ask him if he’s ready to go, and he says he wants to have breakfast first, which is a fair accommodation, his place has set meal hours, and he’s entitled to get his meals.  I tell him to call me when he’s done eating, and I’ll hail an Uber and let him know the make and color of the car, like we’d been doing for rides to church the last few Sundays, and he gives me an affirmative.

20-25 minutes later, I call him back because now I’m sweating the time, because if he doesn’t get into an Uber soon, he’ll definitely already be in morning traffic, but there would be no guarantee that he’d make it to my side of town in time to make it to the graduation, which I would later discover security was following rules to a T, and basically barring anyone who didn’t check in prior to 10 AM, wasn’t getting in.

My dad basically tells me that he doesn’t want to come, that it’s too far, too long of a car ride, and he actually wasn’t planning on coming.  Immediately, my mind quips that in one hand, I’m actually pretty relieved that he’s bailing, because this means I won’t have to babysit him all morning and afternoon, and seeing as how I was skirting work for the day, I would have my job to tend to, as well as the want to do certain errands, such as vote and go help mythical wife with another errand.

I don’t make a big deal about his abrupt bailing because of the relief at not having to babysit him, but subsequently, my mind started unpacking the underlying messages of his decision, and as pretty much is the case with everything my dad does to me, it began to aggravate the piss out of me.

I had reminded my dad well in advance of this date, and at no point did he ever express any sort of lack of want to come to my daughter’s graduation.  I made him write it down on his white board in his own handwriting, because I believe that even those with deteriorating recollection, if they see things written in their own hand, they’re more apt to be able to recall it.  So it’s not like he didn’t know this was coming, and he waited until the eleventh hour and 59th minute to bail on me, which in most cases, wars have been started for less offensive acts.

Continue reading “Ironically, I asked for this” →

I haven’t felt this disconnected to the WWE since my parents took cable away

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This is something that I’ve often wanted to write about, but mostly on account of the chaos that is my life, and/or not feeling like writing about it when I actually have a few minutes to write, it’s just constantly been put back on the shelf

And then other things would emerge from the passage of time, in the WWE universe, and my general notes of what to write about when I get to it modifies, tweaks and I always hope it stays connected enough to where I can consolidate it to all one singular post instead of branching out into separate ones that give me anxiety of an ever-growing topic list of things I want to brog about if I ever had the time (and the drive).

But as the topic of this post clearly states, I’ve never felt so disconnected from my general fandom of the WWE and professional wrestling as a whole, than I am feeling these days.  By now, it’s no secret to fans that parent company TKO has done a number of things that have gotten the attention of fans of the industry, such as cutting a large swath of the WWE roster, reports of requesting massive pay cuts out of those who are still left, and the subsequent voluntary departures of others who did not want to yield their contractually obligated salaries, among numerous other acts of The Man.

Television, which for me is currently limited to just RAW on Netflix, because I don’t want to pay for ESPN Unlimited for PLEs, I don’t want to pay for Peacock for sporadic SNMEs, and I don’t want to pay for whatever service is necessary in order for me to be able to watch theCW for NXT and FOX for Smackdown.*

*I don’t want to jinx it, but there’s also AAA, free on YouTube, which has been extremely gratifying to watch, as it fills a metaphorical void left behind with the closure of NXT UK, where it’s a smaller, grassroots territory with a ton of talent and I’ve been enjoying its product immensely, especially since the book was given to the Undertaker

RAW is next to unwatchable nowadays because at least 65-69% of the broadcast is commercial breaks, stacked on top of the near cartoonish amount of ads that are strewn about the guardrails, on the ring apron and printed on the mat itself.  Wrestler entrances are what really makes wrestling into pro-wrestling, and almost every match has one superstar getting the shaft of having their entrance covered up by 7-8 minutes of commercials.

I genuinely don’t remember the last time I saw Roxanne Perez’s entrance, Io Sky seems to have fallen down to the tier that is at risk of having commercial break entrances, and the New Day’s fantastical entrances have been on perma-commercial break.

Speaking of the New Day, they’re probably the most notable names to emerge from recent events as talents who refused to budge from their contractually obligated compensation, and were subsequently forced into departure as a result.  In one hand, it makes me really sad to see Xavier Woods and Kofi Kingston leaving, but in the other, I’m so proud of both of them for sticking up for themselves, their worth and basically saying fuck no to TKO.

Normally, I think AEW’s track record of converting those who jump into lasting successful results isn’t very high, but if there’s ever been talents that probably have the potential to make a noteworthy splash, it’s The New Day’s who will obviously have to change their names, but the field has been set up to embark on a list of what-if programs, with FTR, Edge and Christian Cope and Cage, and of course, The Young Bucks.  And if they can somehow miraculously both pry Big E away from the E, and get him medically cleared, insert Kenny Omega into the mix for the long-fantasized Elite vs. The New Day.

Speaking of departures, the recent departure of Asuka under ambiguous circumstances was another massive blow, as far as my fandoms were concerned, because there were few more talented packages in the women’s division than Asuka.  Reportedly, she’s not released, she’s not quitting because of salary cuts, but I can’t help but feel that such things weren’t in her head when she chose to step away for a spell.  The firing of her partner Kairi Sane while in the midst of an active storyline, and the lame duck finish to an interesting arc are probably things that she considered, regardless if she refuses to admit.

And just in general, the quality of the product has gotten really poor, in general.  A lot has been made about the reduction of house shows and live events, and yeah it’s great that the talent doesn’t have to kill themselves on these televised events, but it’s not like these events existed solely to cash grab smaller towns.

Live events are basically live training and practice fields for talent to work things out and practice and grow chemistry with their partners.  When you take a lot of these events away, talents have less opportunity to build rapport and practice spots and move sequences in real time, and when it comes time to do them on live television, the results have been noticeably more sloppy.

Take for example, Sol Ruca.  Frankly, I think she is the very obvious face of the women’s division in the future, but her recent demotion promotion to the main roster has been anything but impressive.  And it’s not really any fault of her own, she’s been booked to lose to all the current mainstays, which is not illogical, but when you’re trying to build up a callup, jobbing them to oblivion isn’t the way to go.

But it’s the fact that she’s been thrown to the wolves with very little rapport building with the likes of Liv Morgan and Iyo Sky, both of whom she’s already lost to, but the matches were clunky, disjointed, and way below the standard that the level of talents should be capable of.

The reason why Sol was such a standout in NXT is the quality of the matches she had with all the girls down there, but the difference is that down there, Sol and all the other girls worked out a ton at the Performance Center, NXT runs live events throughout the state, and Natalya Neidhart runs an open training facility for all the local talent.  But on the road with the main roster, Sol has looked exposed and completely devoid of chemistry, because there’s frankly not enough opportunity for it to build.  On paper, there’s no reason why she should have clunkers with the likes of Iyo Sky and Liv Morgan, but if they’re not getting enough reps in off-camera, then it’s definitely going to show on-camera.

Overall, at a holistic level, it just feels that there’s an overwhelmingly oppressive amount of corporate meddling going on in the WWE by their parent company, and although the likelihood of the same result occurring being very low, seeing as how the E is still a veritable money printer, I get a lot of vibes of WCW’s tail end, with how much corporate meddling going on.  AOL Time Warner’s constant interference, and standards and practices basically killed WCW by a thousand cuts, and every time I hear or read some inkling of the corporate meddling by TKO to the WWE, I keep seeing some dudes named Ari and Shapiro at the root of some decisions that indicate that they really have no idea how to operate professional wrestling, and it always feels like there’s always some dude named Shapiro involved whenever it comes to money micromanagement in any arena, be it wrestling, baseball, or any other multi-million dollar industries.

The bottom line is that the WWE has been really, really hard to want to continue to support, and I feel this nihilistic line of thinking that TKO is really deliberately trying to alienate older, passionate fans of the product and industry, preferring to draw in fresh and younger and looser with their money audiences, which isn’t necessarily a bad strategy, but one that can only have fatal consequences down the line for when the ADD-ness of them all decides they don’t like, or wants to cancel wrestling.

There’s a popular saying that, nobody hates X more than X fans, so in this case, it would be that nobody hates wrestling more than wrestling fans, but I used to jokingly add “and Bret Hart” to the end of it, since ‘ol bitter Bret has absolutely nothing positive to say about the current state of professional wrestling, but nowadays, it seems like it’s more accurate to say that nobody hates wrestling more than TKO, because it just feels like with their obsessive pursuit of profit, they’re absolutely killing a property that has proven for generations how profitable and sustainable it can be, when managed by the right parties.

Backlash came and went, and it was one of the first PLEs that I didn’t watch in a while.  I tinkered with VPNs for the Royal Rumble, and plunked down a month for ESPN Unlimited in order to watch Wrestlemania, but the way Backlash’s card set up, it just didn’t look like it was even worth the effort to try and swindle my way to watch it por gratis; apparently my assertion wasn’t wrong, as it turned out to be a very mid card.

The last few weeks have been hectic for me, and I missed RAW last week and didn’t feel like I missed anything (I didn’t), and the latest episode, I kind of watched it for lack of anything better to do with that amount of time, and as I’ve been saying to mythical wife who’s often sitting next to me while I’m watching, the worst part of every Monday night is when I catch up to the live feed, because that means I’m not subject to have to watch the commercials.

As a wrestling fan, I’ve put up with the loss of kayfabe, the steroid scandal almost killing the business, oversaturation of product, AEW’s fans, Katie Vick, the Gobbedly Gooker, and all sorts of shitty stories, wrestler deaths, and tasteless storylines, and stuck around.  But at this current trajectory, there is a very realistic possibility that I’m just going to stop watching RAW, because all the commercials just makes it unbearable, and when it is on, the quality of the performing going downhill isn’t going to help its cause.

Going back to the title of this post, I just haven’t felt this alienated from something I’ve loved for as long as I’ve almost been alive, and it’s kind of sad, and I would wager that I’m not the only one who’s feeling this way out there.

Imagine how much it sucks being Asian and living in this high school zone

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

NBC NY: high school in Long Island has 21 valedictorians

When I came across this story, the very first thing I noticed was the supporting image of the 21 kids all slated to be valedictorians of Jericho High School’s 2026 graduation class, was the obvious fact that there wasn’t a single, non-Asian continent face among them

I phrase my terminology deliberately because they’re not all just East Asians, but some that are from Central Asian countries, but the point is that it’s low hanging fruit to solely point out the obvious notion that when it comes to tryharding, nobody does it better than those from Asia. 

But then I thought to myself, man, how much does it suck to live in the Jericho High school zone; from the students’ perspective, it’s like no matter how good you think you were, there were 21 uber-achievers who never for a second let their foot off the gas since starting high school, and purportedly all somehow managed to get nearly identical perfect marks throughout their HS careers.

Among the 21 valedictorians, there’s got to be a tremendous amount of angst, jealousy, frustration and general animosity that none of them would admit to, but probably feels, on account of the fact that they worked their asses off for four years, and not only were they denied the honor of being the sole valedictorian, but gave to share it with not just one or two other achievers, but twenty other motherfuckers who tryharded just as much as they did.

And of course, let’s not forget the parents of these 21 tryhards, all of them being of various Asian descents, all of them wanting to be able to brag and micro-aggress to their peers and relatives over the intelligence and success of their kids, and being completely unable to, because thanks to the news and stories like this, most are probably innately aware that their outstanding child is nothing special because twenty other tryhards matched them in their abilities to tryhard.

All the same, I feel like I have to call bullshit on this whole thing. I have a hard time believing that 21 kids all got the exact same grade, and I feel like even if they did, there should’ve been all sorts of tiebreakers in place to weed out one true deserving valedictorian instead of crowning 21 nerds with participation trophies.

Like maybe the bar is lower than suspected, but there’s no way 21 kids all got like 97.83% on their aggregate grades, and even if they did, surely some of them had to have various extracurriculars and affiliations that would make them stand out among their academic peers.  Like if Johnny Tran and Vindaloo Nagrani both had exact grades, but Tran was a part of two clubs while  Nagrani wasn’t, then it’s an easy tie breaker in my opinion there.

No way everyone had identical qualifications to that granularity, and I feel like naming 21 kids all as valedictorians is a lazy and diluted honor, and none of these kids should really feel special because if they’re all valedictorians, then nobody is.

It makes me think of the episode of Saved by the Bell, where Jessie Spano thought she was a shoe-in for valedictorian but it turned out that Screech actually had a few decimal points on her, and until he ceded the role to her, he was the de facto valedictorian. Of course, the episode ends with somehow hidden genius Zack Morris speaking at the podium because of course he did but the point remains that when it comes to selecting a valedictorian, it really is serious business to the very end.

But speaking of these 21 kids, talk about how disappointing of a life it must have been, work hard, all gas no brakes, only to be lumped in with a bunch of others.  21 kids all living lives generally forfeit of high school hijinx, social lives, and being general teenagers, only to be stonewalled at the finish line because there were a bunch of others doing the exact same thing.

Makes me think of that film Booksmart, where the main girl who ends up valedictorian after basically living her life like these 21 tryhard kids, discovers that some of the other students in her class that are among the biggest slackers and underachievers, also managed to get into Stanford, Yale or got immediate jobs with Google, without the need to give up their lives entirely to get there.

Like I said earlier, they may all be buddy-buddy for the sake of the story, but there’s no way some of them aren’t harboring some deep seeded hater vibes for their fellow valedictorians, because one or two co-‘s would be understandable and plausible, but 21 is just pure bullshit coddling.

Where has this stuff been all my life

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Chili oil crisp was always something I never gave much thought about; it’s not something I hadn’t ever seen before, after all, it’s almost always at the table whenever you go to an actual sit-down Chinese restaurant.  I’ve never really been compelled to try it before, but over the course of the last year or so, I’ve heard occasional remarks about people who love this particular brand of chili oil crisp, Lao Gan Ma, and how it is one of those condiments that goes with everything, almost like a Chinese version of Frank’s Red Hot or something.

I was at the Asian market a little while ago, and I saw an endcap display where Lao Gan Ma was on sale, and I figured ehh, why not, no time like the present to give it a whirl.  When I brought it home, I tasted it straight, and it was good, but I didn’t really see what all the fuss was all about.  Most people talked about how it went great on eggs, but I can’t exactly eat eggs straight, so that was out of the question, but I could imagine different things that it might go well with, but not many things that I was going to make any time soon.

I found it went okay with curry, but when the day is over, I preferred adding chipotles to my curry as my preferred heat additive, and although I liked the Lao Gan Ma, I knew I had yet to find the right thing to add it to, to really unlock its potential for my palette.

Recently, The Algorithm has been showing me content of all these people who were making these cucumber salads, touting their ease, and general low-cost, when combined with stuff like canned tuna, celery, dill, salt and pepper, with some people utilizing mayo, and others using combinations of cottage cheese and/or Greek yogurt.

Impressionable as I sometimes can be, I decided to give a flyer to one of these recipes, since they seemed a little bit on the healthier side, while being lower on the carbohydrate scale; and it was pretty good, but I felt that it was something that probably would taste great with some sort of hot sauce . . . or some chili oil crisp.

And it was in this union of a creamy cucumber tuna salad, and Lao Gan Ma chili oil crisp, I unlocked this mega combo, where the creamy base of the salad, tempers a little bit of the heat of the chili oil crisp, and they go together in a fantastic combination to where I’m crushing half the bowl of the salad in one sitting, and emptying out a third of my jar of chili oil crisp.

Sure, a hot sauce like Frank’s would probably be good with this cucumber tuna salad, but it wouldn’t give it the satisfying crunch that Lao Gan Ma crispy chilis do, and now I’m basically at a stage of my life where I’m wondering where the heck this stuff has been throughout it, and how excited my inner big back is at seemingly finding the key to unlocking the potential of chili oil crisp, and deliberating future foods that it could probably go great with now as well.

So dismissive, kind of callous, I can’t help but respect it

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Seeing as how my birthday this year was basically borked on account of being endlessly sick throughout the entire month of April, I didn’t really celebrate at all.  I actually still have some gifts that I haven’t even opened, yet, because I’ve been in such a dour plcae over the last few weeks, I want to make sure that I’m in a positive headspace before opening anything that’s meant to be a pick-me-up, and I really don’t think I’ve gotten to that point just yet.

Either way, this is something that I’ve wanted to write about but just didn’t get a chance to and it kept getting pushed back in the queue of things that pique my interest or inspire words to formulate, but I noticed something in the soulless, mostly obligated birthday card that I received from my colleagues at work.

Among the generic and canned-corn hand written messages from my colleagues, I noticed that one person signed via a rubber stamp that simply said “Happy Birthday -Michael”

My brow furrowed, and numerous emotions went through my head at seeing such.  The fact that Michael had a rubber stamp created with the most generic of greetings, was such a sign of dismissal, a lack of genuine care, and an acknowledgment that office colleague birthday cards really are tedious, forced and things that we as people really don’t care about, but feel obligated to participate, for optics.

However, at the same time, I found it to be absolutely hilarious that Michael here had the wherewithal to understand that office colleague cards really are tedious, forced and things we don’t care about, that he created a solution that absolved him of even the littlest of thought necessary to hand write a generic greeting.

Responses from people in my circles whom I shared this with were varied, from wooooowww, to laughing, and if anything at all like me, kind of in admiration for Michael for having such a brilliant idea to have a dismissive and informal stamp to just slap on a soulless Happy Birthday greeting, which includes his name on it, so that everyone who sees it, can see, that Michael feels all of the above.

All the same, regardless of how anyone feels about it, it elicited enough of a reaction from me to where I felt inspired to write about it.  And frankly, that in itself is a gift that’s invaluable, at least to me, and Michael has no idea he accomplished such. 

I kind of want my own generic greeting rubber stamp now.

I clearly give off a fuck off aura

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today, there was an all-hands meeting at work.  I went down to the conference room early so that I could have my choice of seat, and I chose this chair next to wall, but in the front row so it looked like I wasn’t a complete degenerate, planning on dicking around on my phone throughout the entire meeting.  After all, appearance is everything, so I’m often told professionally.

As the clock ticked closer to the start of the meeting, and seats began filling up, the seat immediately next to mine remained unclaimed, regardless of how full up the room was getting.  By the time the meeting started, there were at least 10-15 people who were standing against a wall, while the seat right next to me remained vacant.

In fact, not only was the seat next to me vacant, the two seats immediately behind me were also empty, creating this perfect three-seat halo around me of empty seats.  Had this happened on an airplane, I’d be over the moon, because that’s like the broke boy first class, getting a bunch of seats around you left open.

However, this was not an airplane, but a conference room where everyone had free choice on where they wanted to occupy for the duration of the next hour, the fact remained that three open chairs immediately surrounding me remained open, with numerous people preferring to remain standing, as opposed to sitting near me.

The low-hanging fruit is that I clearly must smell bad, or emanate an odor that is unsavory to people I do not know, but among my friends and those people who actually take the time to get to know me, most have no problem sitting in close proximity to me, so I’m (hopefully) able to take the stinky hypothesis off the table.

So the only logical conclusion at this point is that I have fuck-off aura, that is as potent and overpowering as an anime or video game character, at compelling people to stay the fuck away from me.  Not that I necessarily mind the space that people give me, it gets to the point where I begin to ponder about the appearance of everyone fucking-off from me, and unfortunately perception is reality, and it probably does me little good to look like a person that everyone else wants to stay away from.

I do not apologize or feel the need to disclaim that I have the male equivalent of resting bitch face, and that I look pissed off as my neutral state of existence.  There are times in which such is the case, but even when I feel as if I’m having a good day, I understand that the expression on my face is that of experiencing the absolutely shitty state of transportation in Santorini, Greece.  But people, including my own mother and mythical wife, often implore me to fake it and smile every now and then, which isn’t necessarily bad advice, but faking it, and faking a less miserable expression is tiring and requires more effort and fucks than I’m willing to give, especially in this day and age.

This was not an isolated incident as well.  I have all sorts of memories in my life where relative strangers typically have demonstrated a noticeable aversion to sitting near me, and this isn’t even the only incident off the top of my head in my own office.

There was once a team meeting, that was especially packed on this particular day, and every single seat was taken, except for the one right next to me.  I couldn’t help but chuckle to myself at the notion that even within my own team, my fuck-off aura struck again, and the only seat to remain empty was the one next to me, and this was among a lot of company who kind of knew me, as we were in the same department.

And to add insult to injury, one of the few people in my company that I am not particularly fond of, they meandered into the meeting late, as is customary for the narcissistic asshole they are, but they did a quick scan of the room to look for a seat, and they put themselves into a situation where they were seen scanning, which meant that they had to take something if it were available, and so I had to end up sitting next to my least favorite colleague for the next 40 minutes, all because my fuck-off aura put us into this scenario.

Like I said, incidents like this have happened numerous times in my life, but it just so happens that it happened to a degree where I finally had the motivation to actually sit down and write about it.  And also like I said, I refuse to apologize and ask for forgiveness for looking mean and scary, and if people are unwilling to put their biases aside, then they really can go fuck off.

Proposing a modification to best of sevens

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Obviously I didn’t watch the game, but when I saw the score, I wasn’t the least bit surprised that not only did the Knicks beat the 76ers to complete the sweep, they won by a large margin.  And not only did the Knicks knock the Sixers out of the playoffs, Philadelphia got completely owned (again) by the legions of New Yorkers who made the jaunt down to Philly to watch the conclusion to the series, completely taking over the Whatever Name Arena that the Sixers call home.

Man, I don’t know what’s the deal in Philly, because I normally have this begrudging respect for their sports fans, but outside of the Eagles, it feels like Philly sports fans have completely lost their reputation, seeing as how the Phillies, Sixers and even the Flyers who were also just swept out of the NHL playoffs are all showing poorly, and their supposed, die-hard fans, aren’t showing much better either.

But anyway, back to the subject of this post, I have a proposal that would absolutely, never, ever come to fruition because a lot of parties stand to lose money if it were to happen, and regardless of if the athletes themselves would love the idea, The Man absolutely refuses to yield any money under any circumstances, logical or not.

Regardless; my proposal would be that in a best-of-seven matchup, should any team go up 3-0, the series is over, without the need to get a fourth win.  My hypothetical eye test has observed throughout my life as a sports fan, that not only has historically a 3-0 all but guaranteed a series win, in most cases, a 3-0 has a high chance of being a sweep.

Most every sports fans know that a comeback from 0-3 is practically impossible, with there being legitimately just three recognized instances in history; two in the NHL, one in MLB, and zero in the NBA.  Sure, there have been many instances where be it pride, a fluke, or a good old fashioned college try, where a team down 0-3 has scraped out a win, maybe two, with only a few times in history where they managed to force a game 7, but the ultimate comeback has literally only happened three times in the three big sports that utilize best-of-sevens.

And the thing is, the numbers actually back up my observation; with teams that are up 3-0, their win percentages in game 4 are all ranging from 60-70%, with MLB teams completing the sweep 77.5% of the time, NHL teams closing out at 62.5%, and NBA teams putting the finishing touches at a rate of 69.3%.

So that being said, zeroing in on the NBA, since it’s never happened before, why even bother anymore with playing out a series once a team goes up 3-0?  Not only has it been proven to be impossible for a team down 0-3 to comeback, it seems like in most cases that not only do they get swept, but they also get blown the fuck out in the finale too.

Much like the rest of the world, the NBA today has a lot of players who fall into this complete defeatist mentality, and watching teams that know history is against them, with a monumental task in front of them, you can just see their will to try and give effort is just not there.  I don’t care enough to really pore through the numbers, but I’d wager that a noticeable number of 3-0 game 4’s in history have resulted in not just a sweep, but a sweep by virtue of a big embarrassing blowout.

That being said, I propose to eliminate game 4s once a team is up 3-0, and declare it a series victory, because frankly, it just seems like a foregone conclusion that’s formally just a waste of time.

Obviously, this would never fly, because television broadcast money, advertiser money, venue money, ticket money, concessions money, all the money that circulates on account of one singular basketball game, would be forfeit with this idea, and nobody wants to lose out on getting paid.

But I feel like players would be over the moon if this idea were to become reality, and it would create all sorts of interesting new dynamics if this were the case.  A team up 2-0 starts to really play with their balls out in game 3, knowing that they can close out the series immediately, and potentially get a few extra days to rest before the following round. 

A team down 0-2 really now needs to kick that desperation gear in motion, because 0-2 now becomes the 0-3 in a way, but the difference is if they can stave off 0-3, they not only stay alive, but mathematically 1-2 comebacks don’t mean the end of the world, and even 1-3 comebacks are not impossible either.

Plus there’s a number of not-so altruistic factors that come into play, because if a team closes out a series at 3-0, and have to wait on an opponent in another series that goes the distance, there’s a potential for a long layoff, and almost every sport has demonstrated the perils of too much time off, and it could creates for some interesting outcomes if a hot team that won a 3-0 sits for 13 days, while their opponent who went 7 games to move on is battle tested, hardened, and still has momentum on their side; or they could be exhausted, and the team that won 3-0 got some much-needed rest, and then they overpower their opponents.

Above all else, basketball is a physically grueling sport.  Probably more running than any other sport outside of futbol, and last year especially, we saw an NBA playoffs where like 3-4 different guys tore their ACLs, most notably Tyrese Haliburton in game 7 of the Finals.  Players would probably be thrilled at the possibility of gaining some extra rest time, should they close an opponent out 3-0, and something like this could be critical at allowing for players to get some much needed rest and recovery, and strategically lead to some more compelling basketball.

But again, it boils down to the fact that game 4s now, where a team is down 0-3 are just boring as fuck.  The losing team not only almost doesn’t ever win, they also get embarrassed, when they get blown out to complete their sweeps.  The NBA playoffs are already long enough, why not make some tweaks to the format to help spice some things up?